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Growth is pivotal to the development process and it is exemplified by holistic, progressive, qualitative and quantitative changes.
John Bezos, founder of Amazon said: “Everything I have ever done started small but it progressively grew bigger and bigger. A. G Lafley and Ram Charan in their book: “The Game Changer” explained that growth is achieved when the business is consistently altered to achieve sustainable, profitable organic growth as well as improved margins.
The key to growth, according to them, is innovation “in the hands of the game changer, a leader who is a visionary strategist, a catalyst who uses innovation to drive business from strategy to organisation, budgeting, resource allocation, selecting, rewarding and promoting people; an integrator who sees innovation as an integrated end-to-end process and the hardheaded humanist who uses people to create and achieve differentiation and value-added brands”.
Growth is achieved when there is increase in value creation. The springboards are: cash flow from existing assets which is achieved through increase in efficiency and cutting costs that are not creating value; enhanced value from operating margins, growth from additional activities such as new products or services, new markets as well as growth through revved-up operational excellence.
Also, to achieve growth, there must be discipline in managing performance. We must consistently hold our people accountable in order to raise expectations. Total accountability must be measured regularly. The leader must set a higher standard of accountability for himself and also lead by very clear examples.
Staff development must be a key activity for improving individual and team performance as well as improving capacity to deliver. Self-development has three components: knowledge acquisition, skills development and practical application. Employees must have clarity on expectations to enable them do more. They must also be adequately motivated.
Let us look at how some business leaders achieved growth so we can learn from them.
Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley strategist, documented some growth guides by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs noted that being an expert is good but it is passion to achieve great heights “that will make you take a giant leap from the status quo”. Business leaders should be ahead of customers in order “to create more benefits”. We must consistently make big changes to make it better for customers. Organisations should not just define themselves by what they do. They must aspire to make it better and always provide more benefits.
“Concentrate on benefits, not just the processes and not just being better, faster and cheaper”. Not on the curve you are on but the next “challenging” curve. To achieve big accomplishments, we must face big challenges and set audacious goals.
Also, business people must ensure beauty and finesse in the services they deliver or the products they manufacture. A great guide to innovations according to Steve Jobs “is the readiness to change your mind anytime there is a need to do so. It is a mark of intelligence. It allows positive reversals and more functionality”.
Always strive for the highest value and do not fight on price. “Greater value, not cheapest”. Also, smart CEOs should lead the practical demonstration of the value in their services or products to customers and potential customers.
To ensure sustainable growth, Steve Jobs said leaders should hire those who are “better than them”. “You must hire A-players so that your activities can be on an upward spiral.” According to Steve Jobs, in order to achieve phenomenal growth, smart entrepreneurs must encourage experimentation. “Try and fail and try again, so that you can achieve revolutionary breakthroughs”.
On marketing of services or products, the much-needed attention must be on value and uniqueness. “Create things of value but make them unique”. You will not succeed if you compete on price. “Marketing can be distilled to one simple graph: value and uniqueness”.
Elon Musk, another great business leader, has pointed out that “To achieve desirable growth, you must work super hard. “Input lots of hours and you will get desirable outputs. I always challenge the obstacles standing in the way of success. I do not ever give up. Nurture the business like a child. Attract great and hardworking people to work with you and inspire them to be heroes. If you are convinced something is valuable, do not hesitate to take the risk of failure.
“I do not spend money on advertisements. My preference is for signals, not noise. Awards do not propel growth. We invest on things that will make our products better. We put efforts on designs that will improve and enhance benefits to customers. All efforts must be on better products”.
It is Elon Musk’s advice that business leaders must “listen carefully to feed backs. My goal is to be less wrong. My obsession is for quality. If you are passionate about what you are doing, no matter the high number of mistakes and failures, you will succeed at the end of the day. Effective communication of purpose, scope and scale is also highly desirable”.
Another expert on growth methodology, Simon Cooper propounded the Quadrant Model. This model identifies four key strategic areas into which business leaders can exert their energies in order to successfully achieve sustainable growth. They are: (a) recruiting the right people (b) developing them (c) building team synergy and (d) motivation.
He recommended key strategic points of energy. They are; people, processes, planning and performance. He said we must motivate with reward packages, job satisfaction, achieving great goals, recognition of performance, credit for new ideas and innovation, status, influence, power, organizational culture and work life balance.
An area we need to further elaborate on is the constant monitoring of the growth of earnings. What are the net income earnings accomplishing relative to the amount of money being used to get the earnings? If we increase the rate of current liability obligations at any particular time, will it impact positively on the net earnings?
Are you satisfied with your current framework of value when it is compared with current liability obligations? Are you also paying the necessary attention to risk assessment in your financial management activities?
In conclusion, the Prioritization Model should also be properly factored into your growth efforts. The outlook of your performance metrics must always impact positively and progressively on your growth goals – You must maintain competitive advantage in your segmented competitive arenas. Your unique values will not only differentiate your products and your organisation, they will make you win always.
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